Photographer and set stylist Nick Laciok was about six years old when he had his first creative breakthroughâ€”involving the living room curtains and a pair of scissors. The end result, a shortened set of drapes with bows fashioned from the trimmings, felt like a â€œgroundbreakingâ€ new invention at the time, he recalls.

For many parents, the incident would be a punishable moment, but Nickâ€™s mother took it as a sign that he needed an outlet. â€œMy mom saw that she needed to give me the freedom to create things,â€ Nick says, explaining that from then on, he was given free rein to decorate his childhood bedroom however he saw fit.

Since he couldnâ€™t spend much money on furnishings and decor, he decided to get inventive with the materials he had on handâ€”a very early lesson in resourcefulness that has informed his interior fixations ever since. Many, many DIYs later, the act of creating and reimagining furnishings, and the rooms they live in, still feels second nature to Nickâ€”which is evident as he rattles off all the upgrades heâ€™s made to his 958-square foot, preâ€“World War I apartment in DÃ¼sseldorf, Germany.

Nick and his partner Nils, another creative who just graduated from fashion school, were lucky enough to have inherited it from some friends. â€œWe initially encountered the space devoid of its former charm, but through our restoration work, weâ€™ve managed to infuse it with a blend of historical charm and contemporary design sensibilities,â€ Nick says.

One of his first major tweaks was cloaking the zigzag-like hallway connecting the large, airy rooms with a slick of green paint. It wasnâ€™t quite the right fit (and the hue was eventually sunsetted for a neutral white), but Nick knew that he needed to feel out what the space needed. Itâ€™s an intuitive revamp process that heâ€™s experimented with from rental to rental.

â€œI think that rooms have to grow, and you canâ€™t just bash everything in there and be good with it,â€ Nick explains. â€œYou can just learn from feeling the space and the movement of the sun and the light what the room really needs.â€

Three years in, his apartment is still an evolving work in progressâ€”but itâ€™s settled into a place of calm and refinement, with some surprises here and there. Take the Yves Kleinâ€“blue ceilings that, in concept, seemed a little too out-there for his partner, until Nils saw the full effect.

The intensity of the color gives the nearly 11-foot tall ceilings a modern-day cathedral feel. Since then, Nils has learned to trust Nickâ€™s explorations in design, and heâ€™s offered his own contribution in the form of an obsidian column in the hallway etched with his drawings.

A similarly cavernous effect occurs in the wabi-sabiâ€“inspired living room, converted from a study, where Nils stores vintage fabrics for his clothing designs. The space combines light beige walls with an earthy brown ceiling to complement the naturalistic furnishings found on Kleinanzeigen, the German equivalent of Facebook Marketplaceâ€”a common source for the many secondhand items seen throughout the home.

Take the coffee table, which Nick cobbled together with two thrifted finds: a USM shelf for papers and a stone carved into a flowing organic shape. Small reinventions like this appear throughout the rooms, from an Ikea floor lamp turned sideways and strung up from the ceiling to a wall-mounted sideboardâ€”a white triptych of â€™70s kitchen cabinets which Nick recently fixed up with a stainless steel topâ€”that heâ€™s schlepped from one apartment to another.

Throughout the whole design process, his landlord has been supportive of the updates Nickâ€™s made to his unit in this quiet, family-friendly building. The black vinyl flooring Nick laid to cover up the crumbling tiles underneath is one of the photographerâ€™s few regretsâ€”the dark surface is pretty unforgiving with crumbs, dirt, and the odd spillâ€”but Nick knows that when he eventually leaves this place, itâ€™ll be far better off than how he found it.

â€œI don't even care if I know that I will live in a place for only two years,â€ he says. â€œI invest the energy in it because I love to live in a flat that represents me.â€

More Rental Revamp stories:

An Artist Infuses Her 1,000-Square-Foot Flat With Her â€œPantone-Punkâ€ Style

The Maximalist Magic of Josh & Mattâ€™s Melbourne Home

A Designer and a Filmmaker Make Their Brooklyn Loft Feel Like a Showroom

Project Credits:

Interior Design: Nick Laciok / @nicklaciok

Appears In

Rental Revamp: Nick Laciokâ€™s DIY DÃ¼sseldorf Flat Is a Perpetual Work in Progress